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532 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
She had been nice to me for several weeks since Mama died, but when there were other girls around she always made little of me.
I was never safe in my thoughts,because when I thought of things I was afraid.So I visited people every day, and not once did I go over the road to look at our own house.
Forever more I would be restless for crowds and lights and noise. I had gone from sad noises, the lonely rain pelting on the galvanized roof of the chicken house; the moans of a cow in the night, when her calf was being born under a tree.
For once I was not lonely, because I was with someone I wanted to be with.
One sadness recalls another: I stood there beside the new, crumpled coat and remembered the night my mother was drowned and how I clung to the foolish hope that it was all a mistake and that she would walk into the room, asking people why they mourned her. I prayed that he would not be married.
"Divorce is worse than murder," my aunt had always said- I would never forget it; that and their staring disapproval.
She had plans for them both to leave their husbands one day when they'd accumulated furs and diamonds, just as once she had planned that they would meet and marry rich men and livein houses with bottle of grog opened, and unopened, on silver trays.
She said it was the emptiness that was the worst, the void.